


The power of caffeine and sweets

by kurojiri



Series: Iron Man Bingo 2019 Fills [4]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Coffee Shops, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Howard Stark Mentioned - Freeform, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, James "Rhodey" Rhodes is a Good Bro, Maria Stark Lives, Maria Stark's Good Parenting, Self-Acceptance, Self-Reflection, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark-centric, Tony drops out of MIT, Tony gets himself a coffee shop, dropping out of college
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 14:50:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18012938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurojiri/pseuds/kurojiri
Summary: Owning his very own coffee shop had not been part of the plan for Tony, but he couldn’t complain how his life turned around for the better.





	The power of caffeine and sweets

**Author's Note:**

> And I call this one, AU where Tony left MIT and got himself a coffee shop instead. 
> 
> (P.s this is not be the last we see this AU.) 
> 
> Square Fill: Coffee Shop

MIT had been fun. As much as a place could be when the media wouldn’t shut up about him, or how he would change the world after he would graduate. A lot of classmates always filled his hours too by asking about his dad and what-not. Always trying to use his name or smarts to get ahead too. Fun times.   
  
He had met Rhodey too, so, it couldn’t have been that bad considering that he had been one of the rare people that didn’t care about his last name. An honest guy that liked him and cared for him. Tony never really knew what life was like with a friend around, but since meeting him, it had helped him see how much of his life he wanted to change. College had been an experience, something he could say, had not been filled with all empty gains and promises, it had taught him nonetheless what he didn’t want anymore.   
  
College was not for him entirely. Not in the present when his name was associated with only just his genius and his father’s legacy. He wanted to learn, experiment and to gradually follow what his heart wanted to explore. Hence, why he wanted out. He needed a break from the world and their perspectives of him.   
  
He loved to create. Don't get that wrong, he had fond memories of each creation he made as he grew up. Math and science had always come easy to him, but Tony Stark never liked building weapons. Not really, and he hadn’t like hearing the many comparisons he'd gotten from others and his dad when he did improve of the older versions of weapons Stark Inc. made before. He wanted more than that. Of not going to meetings and having the military by his heels each time he made a faster lighter and destructive missile or gun. It hadn't been anything political, Tony just didn’t want to do the same thing as his father; or God forbid: turn into him.   
  
After talking to Rhodey about it, he had straightened up by his last semester in college. (When he had five credits away precisely, he abruptly left his finals and never returned. His email box had exploded somewhat.)   
  
His father had been, upset to put mildly, when he first heard about it. Angry, and screaming when he had called him on the phone but not surprised that Tony would pull such a stunt to provoke him. The family reunion had been cancelled when he didn’t visit for dinner.   
  
He didn’t go out partying or got wasted in the privacy of his apartment his mom helped purchase for him. Tony simply stopped to evaluate his life and where he wanted to go. It took a month, with Rhodey as support to talk to his mom first. She had been kinder to his moods, his fears and wishes. The idea had been initially pulled out from a hat he didn’t remember ever owning or buying but it had been lying around his floor when he scraped together different jobs into the hat. Obviously, Tony had to make it as a presentable alternative for running away from college. For abandoning most of his work in his PhDs and Masters.   
  
(They may have been a rich family, but it still had been a pretty penny for Tony’s overall education that he threw away when he said he wanted to open his own coffee shop.)   
  
He had liked coffee, always drank more than he should have when he couldn’t have alcohol. It had felt like fate that he would want to consider opening up a place where he sold the very thing, he drank a lot of. He didn’t know if he would brew it himself, or get people to do it yet, since he started turning out sketches of his coffee shop. They started random, very modern and fresh. Then, it was still expensive looking, but a hint of warm undertones in some designs. He did look up techniques about brewing coffee and other hot drinks too on late nights when he couldn’t sleep.   
  
Even with all the money in the world at his fingers, the coffee shop went under construction a year later. Rhodey had still been his cheerleader when it came down to the menus and their prices, his mom had helped with the overall decorations. And his father, well, he did his best to cope by mostly staying in the background.   
  
On opening day, Tony sold out all his drinks and food.   
  
Years would pass and Tony would eventually start brewing it himself. It took a few trials, but he would get to have a steady lifestyle one could have while being Tony Stark. (He eventually also opened a work shop for kids and teens to build their own gadgets with occasional advice from him. The other hired employees from STEM programs did most of the mentoring on the upper level from his coffee shop.) He did open other shops around the country, but he never moved out from the New York shop where his mom had visited often and helped on slow days. It had been their shop as much as Rhodey’s when he came too.   
  
It was his first real home he liked coming to, something he had been glad to have created after MIT. And he would always protect it, because if he could bring passion back into his life after spiraling down, then Tony Stark would do so as the phoenix that he was.


End file.
